


For the Love of Dogs

by CheerUpLovely



Series: OlicityBuzz [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Felicity had a dog, Gen, and I need to know more
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-24 03:20:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9697409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheerUpLovely/pseuds/CheerUpLovely
Summary: How Felicity and Lucky became family





	

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the article: 23 Tumblr Posts About Dogs That You Won’t Get Through Without Smiling  
> https://www.buzzfeed.com/katangus/hello-dog-hello-dog-hello-dog-hello-dog-hello-dog?utm_term=.ay0Zl4QYk#.gl2KexYQq

Lucky comes into her life when she’s eleven years old.

Felicity’s not sure that having a dog is a great idea. But her Mom does, and her Mom just started a job at one of the casinos downtown that pays far better than her bar job, and they really need the money, but it means leaving Felicity alone until late at night. She’s not really sure she likes that idea, but Felicity likes the peace and quiet, so she made a casual comment about getting a dog, and now Lucky’s sat beneath her computer desk with his head on her knees watching her.

His head jerks up around eight o’clock when the neighbor’s front door slams a little too loudly and they start arguing again. Lucky growls once and then puts his head back down on her knee.

She finds herself stroking his ears without much thought as she scrolls through the internet. It feels nice to have someone looking out for her other than her mother.

He’s also trying to make it up to her because he chewed up her sneaker earlier. She never liked that pair anyway.

\---

They’re both trying not to laugh in the car on the way home from the vet.

It’s their first trip to the vet on a Thursday afternoon when Felicity came home from school and received her usual tackled greeting from Lucky. She knows that her Mom’s always telling her she should smile more, but that’s only because she’s never around when she gets home from school because she’s always smiles when her boy greets her at the door with his wagging tail.

But that Thursday he jumps at her and wags his tail and he yelps in a way that makes her understand the haggard gasp her mother does when she used to trip over as a kid.

“Well, the important thing is that he’s okay.”

Her Mom’s trying to be pretty calm about it all, as if she hasn’t rushed home from work when Felicity called her in a panic, and as if they haven’t spent their coveted savings of one hundred dollars on an emergency vet appointment.

“Our dog’s dumb,” Felicity decides.

Because Lucky sprained his tail.

From wagging it too hard.

Felicity’s dog was so damn happy to see her that he sprained his tail, and sure, it’s a dumb injury but it’s also the most loved she’s felt in a long time.

“I can’t believe he peed on the vet,” her Mom grimaces.

\---

Her Mom never works on a Monday, so that becomes their weekend night. They sit in her room, watch and old movie and devour a tub of ice cream between them. She’s getting older, and most days she’s finding that she’s pretty angry at her mom for reasons which are childish and meaningless in the grand scheme of things. She knows she’s not really angry at her Mom because whenever Monday comes around, she’s always ready with the movie and the ice cream.

“Lucky, bed,” her Mom says as she comes back into the bedroom with the tub of mint chip.

Lucky’s bed is always pulled in from where it’s usually in Felicity’s room to the end of her Mom’s bed for movie night. But tonight he’s fully ignored his bed in favour of tucking himself underneath the duvet between the two pillows. He’s made a decent attempt at hiding himself in the process, but one ear sticks out from between the pillows and there’s a lump in the blankets that can’t be disguised.

“You never said _which_ bed,” Felicity adds, unhelpfully.

\--

“Felicity Megan Smoak, you will bathe that dog this instant.”

She’s standing in the doorway desperately holding onto Lucky’s leash, because he’s pretty strong when he wants to be and she’s not entirely sure that he couldn’t just tug her down the street if he really wanted to. When he’s on a mission, he can’t be stopped.

Right now, his mission is the soft couch cushions he wants to rub his mud-soaked body into.

“Mom, I have to get him inside first,” Felicity argues, because there’s no way to the bathroom without walking through the pristine apartment (even if it will only look pristine for another twelve hours because cleaning day only comes once a week).

“He’s not walking through my living room looking like that,” her Mom decides abruptly.

Felicity makes That Noise. It’s not quite an ‘ugh’, or a ‘huh’, or a ‘but Mooooom’, but her Mom’s always telling her ‘Don’t make That Noise at me, young lady’ so she knows it’s annoying enough to get the job done. “Then how am I going to get him to the bath?”

“Go and ask the building manager if you can hose off that beast out back.”

There’s little chance of it happening, because the building manager hates them and only lets them stay as a favour to someone that Felicity doesn’t know. He tells them they should feel thankful that he lets them stay there for the rent that he does. Felicity’s seen the rent requests. There’s nothing to be thankful about there.

But she tugs on the leash until Lucky follows her down the hall, leaving the front door swinging wide open so she can have the joy of getting in the last word.

“It’s not Lucky’s fault. He thought he was jumping into water, not mud.”

\--

Lucky hates fireworks. Oh, he’s terrified of them.

There are a lot of them on the strip, but they only really hear them in their apartment on New Years Eve. Her Mom’s working this year, and it’s just her and Lucky at home because she didn’t want to go to the party that her few friends are having. Of course, that’s the line she gave her mother, because if her Mom found out that her friends were sneaking to a bar on the strip with their fake I.D.’s, she’d actually push her to go out, when there’s a movie marathon on TV that she’d much rather entertain herself with.

But the first bang of the fireworks is followed by a desperate scrambling of paws on ceramic tiles as Lucky bolts from her side in the kitchen and darts underneath the couch.

It’s a great idea. In theory. He lies beneath the couch where she sits, nosing at her dangling toes to assure himself that his favourite person was there.

It’s not as much a great idea when he can’t figure out how to get himself out from underneath.

\---

Lucky’s in action the moment there’s a scratching at the lock. He always lifts his head up from where it rests over her feet as she lies in bed, staring in the direction of the door as he waits for the telltale twist of her Mom’s key in the lock and then he contents himself with going back to sleep.

But tonight is different. Tonight the lock isn’t twisting with a key and Felicity’s remembering all those reports of break-ins the last few nights, and suddenly her Mom feels so far away.

The door slides open ever so carefully, and she’s looking around for anything she can use as a weapon when Lucky launches himself at the door, trapping a hand in it as he hits his full weight against it. The sound that comes out of him is dangerous, one that she’s never heard before, and he doesn’t let up. He barks, he growls, he snarls, and he keeps himself between Felicity and the door the entire time.

It’s only when it wakes her neighbour that everything comes to a halt. Her neighbour isn’t always a decent person, and Felicity knows he’s into some shady things, but he calls her Mom at work and tells her that he’ll stay there until she gets back, and then calls the police, then calls the building manager to come up and fix the door, and he makes Felicity a drink and tells her how important it is to take care of your own.

Later she’ll realise he’s in a gang. But when he says it all she thinks about is Lucky pressed against her leg, and she knows exactly what he’s trying to tell her.

\---

The first morning she wakes up without Lucky on her bed, her heart aches. It’s not even an ache, that doesn’t feel strong enough. It’s somewhere between a burn and an emptiness that she can’t put into words. She reaches blindly to the space at behind her legs where she can usually bury her fingers in Lucky’s fur, and hits nothing but the bed sheet.

He’s not there.

He’s not going to be there any more.

There’s nothing worse than that, she decides. She’s lost people in her life that meant an awful lot to her, but losing Lucky from her life _destroys_ her. Her Mom got her a dog to feel safe and now Lucky’s not beside her and it’s as if a safety net has been taken out from beneath her.

He’s gone.

It feels like everything’s gone.

\---

Halfway around the world and back again, Felicity starts bringing Oliver closer into her family life. She’s distanced herself from family for so many reasons, but Oliver is realising that if a family is in their future (even though they firmly won’t talk about it) then she needs to let him into the family she already has.

They end up on a farm not too far from where she grew up. It’s not all that productive now, but they put events on at the weekend and people bring their kids up to see the animals.

He’s there the moment she’s out of the car, barrelling his full weight into her because even after all this time, he knows exactly who she is.

Lucky’s old now and she knows he doesn’t have many years left in him, but he’s spending those years with her grandparents chasing chickens around their yard. Once she’d started MIT he was alone so often that her Mom knew it wasn’t fair to him to stay cooped up on his own, so she’d sent Lucky to live with her parents knowing that he’d be better cared for there. 

He’s not as agile as he once was, but he knows who she is immediately and he finds the energy to jump up at her until she gives in and sits down on the dirt path.

Somewhere between those dog kisses and the furious wagging tail and the fur that still feels like home, she manages to introduce the new love of her life to the first love of her life.

“Oliver, meet Lucky.”


End file.
